СНАР, LV. 1809. 57. Mortal earth; but his countenance remained unchanged, not a sigh escaped his lips, and, sitting on the ground, he watched with an anxious and steadfast eye the progress of the battle. As it advanced, however, and it became wound of Sir manifest that the troops were gaining ground, his counJohn Moore. tenance brightened, and he reluctantly allowed himself to be carried to the rear. Then the dreadful nature of the wound appeared: the shoulder was shattered to pieces; the arm hanging by a film of skin, the breast and lungs almost laid open. As the soldiers placed him on a blanket to carry him from the field, the hilt of his sword was driven into the wound: an officer, destined to celebrity in future times, CAPTAIN HARDINGE, attempted to take it off, but the dying hero exclaimed, "It is as well. as it is; I had rather it should go off the field with me." He was carried by the soldiers towards the town, but though the pain of the wound soon became excessive, such was the serenity of his countenance, that those around him expressed a hope of his recovery. “No,” said he, "I feel that is impossible." When approaching the ramparts, he several times desired his attendants to stop, and turn him round that he might again see the field of battle; and when the advance of the firing indicated that the British were successful, he expressed his satisfaction, and a smile overspread the features that were relaxing in death.1 1 Moore's Narrative, 354, 371. Nap. i. 499. 58. His death. The examination of his wound at his lodgings, speedily cut off all hope of recovery; but he never for an instant lost his serenity of mind, and repeatedly expressed his satisfaction when he heard that the enemy were beaten. "You know," said he to his old friend Colonel Anderson, "that I always wished to die this way." He continued to converse in a calm and even cheerful voice, on the events of the day, inquiring after the safety of his friends and staff, and recommended several for promotion on account of their services during the retreat. "Stanhope," said he, observing Captain' Stanhope, "remember me to your sister."* Once only his voice faltered, as he spoke of his mother. Life was * The celebrated Lady Hester Stanhope, to whom he was engaged-the partner of Mr Pitt's counsels for many years, and since so celebrated for her romantic adventures in the East. СНАР. LV. 1809. ebbing fast, and his strength was all but extinct, when he exclaimed, in words which will for ever thrill in every British heart,-"I hope the people of England will be satisfied: I hope my country will do me justice." Released in a few minutes after from his sufferings, he was wrapped by his attendants in his military cloak, and laid in a grave hastily formed on the ramparts of Corunna, where a monument was soon after erected over his uncoffined remains by the generosity of Marshal Narrative, Ney. Not a word was spoken as the melancholy inter- 354, 371. ment by torch-light took place; silently they laid him in 500. his grave, while the distant cannon of the battle fired the funeral honours to his memory.1* 1 Moore's Nap. i. 499, and venera tion with regarded in This tomb, originally erected by the French, since enlarged by the British, bears a simple but touching 59. inscription,t worthy of the hero over whose remains it His grave, is placed. Few spots in Europe will ever be more the object of general interest. His very misfortunes were which it is the means which procured him immortal fame ; his Spain. disastrous retreat, bloody death, and finally his tomb on a foreign strand, far from kin and friends.-"There is scarcely a Spaniard," it has been eloquently said, "but has heard of this tomb, and speaks of it with a strange kind of awe. Immense treasures are said to have been buried with the heretic general, though for what purpose no one pretends to guess. The demon of the clouds, if we may trust the Gallegans, followed the *This touching scene will live for ever in the British heart, embalmed in the exquisite words of the poet : "Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, No useless coffin enclosed his breast, Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him; And we bitterly thought on the morrow. "JOHN MOORE, LEADER OF THE ENGLISH ARMIES, SLAIN IN BATTLE, 1809." LV. 1809. CHAP. English in their flight, and assailed them with waterspouts as they toiled up the steep winding paths of Fuencebadon; whilst legends the most wild are related of the manner in which the stout soldier fell.-Yes, even in Spain immortality has already crowned the Spain, i. 271. head of Moore ;-Spain, the land of oblivion, where the Guadalete flows." 1 1 Borrow's Bible in 60. and their return to England. Jan. 17. On the fall of Sir John Moore, and the wound of Sir David Baird, the command devolved upon General Hope, Embarkation who conducted the remaining arrangements with that of the troops, decision and judgment which afterwards became so conspicuous in the Peninsular war, and whose eloquent despatch announcing the battle of Corunna and the death of Sir John Moore, agitated so profoundly the heart of his country.* The boats being all in readiness, the embarkation commenced at ten at night; the troops were silently filed down to the beach, put on board with admirable order, and the whole, except the rearguard, reached the transports in safety before day. GENERAL BERESFORD, at the head of the rearguard, two thousand strong, and GENERAL HILL, who was stationed on the promontory behind the town, both destined to celebrity in future times, were the last to be withdrawn; the latter did not embark till three o'clock in the afternoon of the following day. The French gave them no annoyance, so strongly had the bloody repulse of the preceding day inspired them with respect for British valour. With a courage and generosity worthy of the highest admiration, the Spaniards manned the ramparts when the last of the English forces were withdrawn, and prolonged the defence for several days, so as to allow the whole sick, wounded, artillery, stores, and even prisoners, to be brought away. But it "I need not expatiate on the loss which the army and his country have sustained by the death of Sir John Moore. His fall has deprived me of a valuable friend, to whom long experience of his worth had sincerely attached me. is chiefly on public grounds that I must lament the blow. It will be the conversation of every one who loved or respected his manly character, that after conducting the army through an arduous retreat with consummate firmness, he has terminated a career of distinguished honour, by a death that has given the enemy additional reason to respect the name of a British soldier. Like the immortal Wolfe, he is snatched from his country at an early period of a life spent in her service; like Wolfe, his last moments were gilded by the prospect of success, and cheered by the acclamation of victory; like Wolfe, also, his memory will for ever remain sacred, in that country which he sincerely served, and which he had so faithfully served."-SIR JOHN HOPE to SIR DAVID BAIRD, Jan. 18th 1809; Ann. Reg. 1809, App. to Chron. 375. CHAP. LV. 1809. A few guns placed by the French on the heights of St Lucie, without the walls, which could not be maintained, alone occasioned, by the fire which they opened upon the vessels in the bay, great confusion among the transports, but without doing any serious damage. At length the last of the long files of baggage and stragglers were got on board, and the English fleet, amidst the tears of the inhabitants, stood to the northward, and were lost to the sight amidst the cold expanse of the watery main. Then, and not till then, the inhabitants of Corunna, feeling it in vain to prolong a defence which such a host had resigned in despair, and having honourably discharged every duty 1 Tor. ii. 203, 205. Nap. i. to their discomfited allies, capitulated to Marshal Soult, 498, 499. who, a few days afterwards, obtained possession, after a 291. South. trifling resistance, of the important fortress of Ferrol, ii, 530, 531. with seven sail of the line, and very extensive naval stores.1 Lond. i. 289, the British No words can convey an adequate idea of the gloom and despondency which prevailed in the British isles 61. when intelligence of this long catalogue of disasters was Extreme gloom which received. In proportion to the warm and enthusiastic these events hopes which had been formed of a successful issue to the produce in patriotic cause, had been the anxiety and interest which sles. was felt when the crisis approached. In particular, when Napoleon, at the head of three hundred thousand chosen troops, burst through the Pyrenees, and the brave but undisciplined Spanish levies were brought in contact with his experienced veterans, the public anxiety became almost unbearable. The rout of Espinosa, the overthrow at Burgos, the defeat of Tudela, succeeding each other in rapid succession, were felt the more keenly, that the British nation had been led by the exaggerations of the public journals to form a most erroneous idea, both of the strength of the Spanish and the force of the French armies. Most of all, they were misled by the pleasing illusion, which the experience of every age has proved to be fallacious, but which is probably destined to the end of the world to deceive the enthusiastic portion of mankind, that a certain degree of popular excitement can supply the want of discipline and experience, and that general ardour is more to be relied on than organisation and conduct. СНАР. LV. 1809. 62. Despair the public mind. When, therefore, the Spanish levies, flushed with the trophies of Baylen and Saragossa, were dissipated with more ease than the regular armies of Austria and Muscovy; when the Somo-sierra pass was stormed by a which seized charge of lancers, and Madrid fell within three weeks after the campaign had been opened by Napoleon, a sort of despair seized the public mind, and nothing seemed now capable of withstanding a power which beat down with equal ease the regular forces of northern, and the enthusiastic levies of southern Europe. A transient gleam shot across the gloom when Sir John Moore advanced to Sahagun, and the English journals confidently announced that seventy thousand English and Spaniards were rapidly interposing between the Emperor and the French frontier, and would possibly make him prisoner in the capital he had won. Proportionally deeper was the gloom when this hope also proved fallacious, when Romana's forty thousand men dwindled into a few thousand starving wanderers, and the British army, instead of making Napoleon prisoner in the heart of Spain, was expelled, after a disastrous retreat, with the loss of its general, from the shores of the Peninsula. 63. Horror ex appearance of the army on its return. The English had hitherto only known war in its holiday dress their ideas of it were formed on the pomp of melodramatic representation, or the interest of pacific cited by the reviews: and though strongly impressed with a military spirit, they were, from their happy insular situation, strangers to the hardships and the calamities of actual campaigns. The inhabitants of the towns along the Channel had seen the successive expeditions which composed Sir John Moore's army embark in all the pride of military display, with drums beating and colours flying, amidst the cheers and tears of a countless host of spectators. When, therefore, they beheld the same regiments return, now reduced to half their numbers, with haggard countenances, ragged accoutrements, and worn-out clothing, they were struck with astonishment and horror. This was soon increased and turned into well-founded alarm, by a malignant fever which the troops brought back with them, the result of fatigue, confinement on shipboard, and mental depression, and by the dismal and often exaggerated accounts which were spread by the |